Purdue Center for Global Food Security awards research grants on U.S. student projects in 18 countries

October 17, 2012

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University research center
leading efforts to develop the next generation of scientists and engineers to
help solve world hunger is awarding $444,250 in grants to graduate students at
14 U.S. universities.

The grants for students at the 14 universities, including
Purdue, range from $7,000 to $40,000 and are intended to provide support for
overseas research projects leading to a master's or doctoral degree, Gary
Burniske, managing director of the Purdue Center for Global Food Security, said
Wednesday (Oct. 17) in announcing the recipients.

"We are excited to be partnering with these exceptional
graduate students who have a passion to address hunger problems in these
developing countries," Burniske said. "This is a major step toward
laying a foundation to launch long-term international research collaborations
for students and their affiliated faculty advisers and mentors and to support
tomorrow's leaders across an array of disciplines related to food
security."

The six funded projects led by Purdue graduate students are:

* Stephanie Rosch - How farm size, the use of formal and informal contracts,
and trading institutions differ between export and domestic markets in Kenya,
Africa.

* Anne Dare - Wastewater reuse in agriculture in Tunisia, Africa, and
Palestine in Western Asia.

* Daniel Tobin, Pennsylvania
State University - Impact of increased market access
on household livelihood strategies used to meet food security in Peru.

This past summer, the Center for
Global Food Security hosted the first U.S. Borlaug Summer Institute on Global
Food Security at Purdue
for more than 30 U.S. graduate students. Participants engaged in discussions
with experts from various disciplines to understand the multidimensional
approaches needed to resolve food security problems.

Borlaug, an agronomist and humanitarian who died in 2009, is
called the father of the "green revolution." He is credited with saving millions of
lives worldwide by developing high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat varieties.
For his work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

The Center for Global Food
Security, led by distinguished Purdue professor Gebisa Ejeta, was launched in the
university's Discovery Park in 2010 to take up one of the world's most pressing
challenges: getting enough food to people who need it the most today and
producing enough to meet even greater future demands.

Ejeta, a native of
Ethiopia, received the 2009 World Food Prize for his work in developing sorghum
varieties resistant to drought and the parasitic weed Striga. His research
dramatically increased the production and availability of sorghum for hundreds
of millions of people in Africa, where it is a major crop.